Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems

Bringing together cutting edge and diverse research from international and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book initiates and shapes conversations about transgender people within the criminal justice system.

Ambitious and timely, the book collates research to provide detailed research-based insights into the involvement of transgender people in different types of criminal justice systems and in different parts of the world. With a focus on all parts of the system, chapters explore interactions with various criminal justice services, with a principal focus on carceral systems. In doing so, a wide variety of topics are discussed, including access to medical care and vulnerability to harassment and physical violence as well as the uses and abuses of state power. These are examined using a plethora of methods, and through the different perspectives provided by the authors, including academics, activists, and practitioners.

Collating international research and enabling comparisons with and between different criminal justice systems, Transgender People Involved with Carceral Systems will be of value to academics, practitioners, human rights defenders, and policy-makers working across a wide range of disciplines and criminal justice contexts, including criminology, sociology, law, social policy, zemiology, queer theory, and transgender studies.

Matthew Maycock, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Monash University. He was previously a Baxter Fellow in Community Education at the University of Dundee. Matthew previously worked within the criminal justice system in Scotland as a Learning and Development Researcher at the Scottish Prison Service. Matthew is an anthropologist by training, undertook his PhD at the University of East Anglia (UK), and leads on an ongoing longitudinal study analysing modern slavery and freedom in Nepal through the theoretical lens of masculinity. Throughout various studies, Matthew has consistently worked on gender issues, with critical studies on men and masculinity being a particular focus. Matthew is the co-editor of four edited collections, all focusing on aspects of life in prison, and he sits on the editorial board of three journals as well as being an editor of the International Journal of Prison Health.

Saoirse O’Shea is a non-binary person who underwent “gender affirming surgery” in December 2020. I’ve worked as an academic in UK-based universities since 2000 and am currently employed as a senior lecturer (associate professor). I sometimes write about my lived experiences as a non-binary person and on gender, queer theory and queer(y)ing gender, and academic theory. I have published with Olga Suhomlinova and others various articles concerned with the lived experiences of transgender people in contact with the criminal justice system in England and Wales in the British Journal of Criminology and the International Journal of Mental Health as well as a chapter in Advances in Trans Studies: Moving Toward Gender Expansion and Trans Hope. Vol. 32 (Johnson, A.H., Baker A., Rogers, T. and Taylor, T. eds.). Olga and I are also currently writing a book for publication in 2024, Transgender and Non-binary Prisoners’ Experiences in England and Wales: Coming Out, based on our longitudinal research. I like cats, chocolate, fashion, and tattoos.

Valerie Jenness is Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of four books and many articles published in sociology, law, criminology, and gender journals. Her work on prostitution, hate crime, prison violence, transgender prisoners, and prison grievance systems has been honoured with awards from half a dozen professional organisations and informed public policy, and she has received national recognition for teaching and mentoring. She has served as President of the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Pacific Sociological Association.